‘Under their sight,’ I say, and I reach out and take the sword from her. The blade catches in the starlight from the viewport, illuminating the words engraved along the blade’s length.

Inventi sumus in fide.

In faith, we are found.

With the sword granted, Elivia turns away from me and crosses to the opposite side of the gnarlwood table. Under other circumstances, the rite would have been much grander. There would have been readings and hymnals and praises sung, but this quieter method fits what I know about Elivia as much as the lack of places to sit does. I was always told that she is abrupt and direct, and that ceremony irks her. It is a strange thing, for someone raised amongst the Orders. We are surrounded for our entire lives by ceremony of one kind or another.

‘Ophelia VII is as good as recaptured,’ Elivia says, reaching out and tracing her armoured fingers over the maps before her. ‘The Lord Commander’s crusade will soon move on.’

I take a few steps forwards and join her at the table, the sword heavy in my hand. My sword. The maps chart a multitude of systems and pathways from across the God-Emperor’s domain. I see the Armageddon system. Badab, and Tallarn. At the heart of the largest of the charts, Holy Terra is wrought in gold leaf. But it is not just our worlds and fiefdoms that I see. Every one of Elivia’s maps has been amended and revised. I see Cadia, blotted out in red. Great warp storms, wrought in ink, and across all of Elivia’s charts and maps a vast, red scar that touches everything in one way or another.

The Cicatrix Maledictum. The Great Rift.

‘Where will the crusade go?’ I ask, because I would not know where to begin.

‘To the galaxy’s edge,’ Elivia says. ‘To liberate more worlds as it did our home.’

Her words run fingers down my spine, because this might look to be our darkest hour on maps and charts, but even so, it is a time of miracles. True miracles, like the Lord Commander, returned. The need to fight sets a fire inside me.

‘And we will accompany it,’ I say.

Elivia lifts her fingertips from the map. Her battleplate hums discontentedly.

‘No,’ she says. ‘We will not.’

Elivia’s response is like being struck. I cannot help but ask, ‘Why?’

Elivia picks up a slim roll of parchment marked with the seal of the open eye. ‘Because we have received an astropathic communication from the Convent Prioris on Terra,’ she says. ‘The message was sent months ago. It was delayed by the opening of the Great Rift. Distorted by distance, and by the storms. It killed half of our choir just to hear it, but they divined the meaning nonetheless.’

Dread grows large in my chest.

‘What did it say, your grace?’ I ask.

‘That the Shield of Saint Katherine has been lost beyond the Great Rift,’ Elivia says.

All in an instant, I am consumed by my dream. By the fire and the question, and the gold and steel face of the shield.